“The parasite, as any other living thing, aims to reproduce as much as possible, and therefore, exploiting its environment as much as possible. This does not mean that the further exploitation of the host will help to achieve reproductive success of the parasite.”
~ Claude Combes, L’Art d’Être Parasite (loosely translated from french)

The question has been propounded and answered numerous times: “Are we (humans) any smarter than yeast?” The reluctant answer is usually, “No, not really.” Sure, yeast (pl.) possess no consciousness or awareness so far as we can tell, but that may not be a good measure of smarts, it turns out. The salient point of comparison is that yeast consume their environment/habitat/medium until it’s overpopulated and depleted, at which point they die en masse. We’re doing the very same, though it’s taking a long time and we’re not quite done yet. Maybe ionizing radiation from nuclear Armageddon of one sort or another (who’s still watching Fukushima?) will get us before we destroy our own habitat with pollution and anthropogenic climate change (not that nuclear fallout isn’t also destroying our habitat), maybe not. Identical result either way.

A master narrative to explain everything eludes us. True believers are probably content with the idea that god’s will reigns supreme and that, in all his benevolence, he will continue to provide. That’s a comforting fable many have chased into their graves. Those of us bent toward a system of belief based more on evidence see a different future, not so much potential as inevitable.

I realized recently that many of us live double lives: (1) the one we present to our families, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, employers, etc. who have not yet countenanced the idea of collapse honestly for a variety of reasons and (2) the one we sense deep down and are compelled out of a mixture of grief, horror, despair, and commiseration to share in venues like this one. But there’s another kind of dual life that interests me: the life of the body vs. the life of the mind.

process by which materials are distributed (moved) throughout the organism

release of chemical energy from certain nutrients

chemical combination of simple substances to form complex substances

incorporation of materials into the body of an organism

increase in size

process by which cells become specialized for specific functions

removal of metabolic wastes

process by which organisms maintain a stable internal environment

process by which organisms produce new organisms of their own kind

the sum total of all the chemical reactions occurring within the cells of an organism

We live to eat, reproduce, and eventually die — all basic functions of the body. In our current ‘Age of Abundance’, those of use hanging out on computers probably have our life-preserving bodily needs met and aren’t scrambling to stave off dehydration and starvation the way those living at the edges do. We easily forget, then, that our bodies fail rather quickly without continued inputs: in a couple minutes without air, in a few days without water, and in a few weeks without food. Thus, when fed and clothed and housed satisfactorily (not that we stop consuming there), we easily lose touch with the life of the body and believe — mistakenly, comically, tragically, take your pick — that we can live in our heads.

Living in Our Heads

As a social species, humans also have certain psychosocial needs that must be met. Failures tend not to be as immediately obvious as when bodily needs go unmet, but results are no less dramatic: individuals run off the rails (drug- and alcohol-related self-destruction, psychosis, violent rampages, suicide, etc.) and societies (if you recognize human collectives as a superorganism) become embroiled in madness. When exactly society/civilization first went mad is probably a matter of opinion (some might suggest, for instance, the French Terror), but in the modern industrial era, I suggest that World War One is the conflict that broke us psychologically. We’ve never really recovered. Follow-on wars (World War Two, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Afghanistan and Iraq (undeclared), and the so-called War on Terror) have all consumed the energies and economies of the world’s superpowers without entirely clear benefits, except perhaps for WWII, which at least ended the Holocaust and for a time stopped Fascism.

Wholesomeness is not a term one could use fairly to describe the attributes of modern American culture, not anymore (if indeed ever). We now live in a Society of Spectacle, and electronics in particular enable omnipresent connection to a firehose-style information feed: pure, indiscriminate volume pointed at everyone all the time. And if ever there were an embodiment of a bottomless pit, an insatiable appetite, our consumption of information is it. Seriously, how many broadcast and cable channels are there, all competing at the juvenile game of made-you-look? Even those of us here at Collapse have what might be called a “spectacular” view of the proceedings.

The Compulsive Explainer has an interesting albeit brief post called “Information Overload as an Addiction” suggesting that our preoccupation with entertainment, especially the electronic sorts (radio, cinema, television, Internet), is for the masses equivalent to giving away one’s mind. Information insatiability has become an addiction, and like political junkies, the media-saturated middle mind of the masses cannot perceive reality through what’s projected by the media at the bidding of cultural, corporate, and political leaders who would keep us calmed and buying. Instead, we live (temporarily) within a giant fiction, a phantasmagoria if you will, nearly a virtual reality, from which there is scarcely an escape even for those who can see the bubble (always from the inside, of course — after all, we’re on computers). While the story continues to be spun, our attention is riveted and our compliance coerced. But never fear: the life of the body will triumph eventually, though only in the negative sense.

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35 thoughts on “Living Double Lives”

One important difference between humans and yeast: yeast can form spores that may survive conditions lethal for the cellular form, and may colonise new food sources if the new conditions are suitable. Oh to be able to form a spore and come back when the current round of insanity has burned itself out and the Earth has recovered from overpopulation and CO2-induced super-heating.

It’s a fine point but worth mentioning: the Second World War did put an end to the mass murder of Jews in Europe but it did not stop fascism. Indeed, fascism thrived in the so-called free world before, throughout, and after the Second World War (well hidden from public view, of course); the war was fought to determine which particular brand of fascism would dominate the world: heavy, overt fascism or light, covert fascism.

Following the ‘defeat of fascism’, the British were soon setting up concentration camps for Jews who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and indiscriminately killing both Jews and Arabs who dared to challenge their arrangements. Much the same in Greece, Italy, India etc. And between them the British and Americans slaughtered millions of people around the world who had silly notions about breaking free from western domination. Still do, to a slightly lesser extent.

Yes, many of my physical daily needs are provided to a degree by ‘the empire’. My emotional needs are constant thwarted by the empire. Have been for practically all my life.

The hardest part for me is watching it all turn to shit, with practically everyone around me cheerleading the turning to shit.

There was an excellent comment from John right at the end of the last thread which deserves follow up.

It can never be said enough times. Uninformed fools, lunatics, opportunists and professional liars are in control of western societies. That does not make us all uninformed fools, lunatics or professional liars.

Kevin Moore sez: “the Second World War … did not stop fascism. Indeed, fascism thrived in the so-called free world before, throughout, and after the Second World War (well hidden from public view, of course); the war was fought to determine which particular brand of fascism would dominate the world: heavy, overt fascism or light, covert fascism.”

While drafting this post, I thought about saying something about how many of the scourges of humanity (war-making, sexism, racism, slavery) were merely driven underground rather than driven out of existence but settled instead of saying stopped “for a time.” Your point is well taken, and I agree.

The bit about our important difference from yeast, while accurate, seems to me irrelevant in answer to the question posed at the outset.

“I suggest that World War One is the conflict that broke us psychologically. We’ve never really recovered.” Yes, part of the horror besides the senseless slaughter of millions of young men, is that with some common sense and good will it could easily have been avoided. But Chauvinism, Militarism,and Empire rivalry and greed sealed their fate. Historians to this day still can’t find any sufficient reason why this conflict broke out, especially as Western Europe was already a civilisation with shared values and attitudes except to say it was some manifestation of suicide..Next year on the anniversary of its start the participating nations should ask their adult populations to wear black as a sign of mourning for the catastrophic loss of their youth.

Not that it matters much at this stage but I think the reasons for World War 1 have been well documented; it’s just that they are not well known and are rarely discussed.

As far as I understand it, Germany had been a collection of small states with little industrial activity. Under Prussian leadership, it was united and heavy industries were established. By the late 1800s Germany was posing a serious threat to markets, undercutting and outperforming complacent British manufacturers. Also, with the world already largely carved up by older colonial powers, Germany needed access to cheap raw materials not controlled by the British, French, Americans and Russians etc. The Berlin to Baghdad railway was under construction in the lead-up to the war, with the intention of transporting Mesopotamian oil to Germany and allowing German manufacturers to distribute goods without using the Suez Canal. Yikes, that all had to be stopped! And there was the matter of Germany nibbling a chunk of resource-rich territory off France. If I am correctly informed, the first engagement of British troops was not in the defence of Belgium but in the invasion of Basra.

Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium.

We are many (eukaryotic cells) but we are one, operating under one cerebral umbrella that constantly scans the environment for resources and opportunity. Massive amounts of energy containing matter are crushed, mixed and pureed by various specialized organs and then absorbed inward towards the circulation. The cells are given enough to maintain their functions, but not enough to grow beyond the limitations placed upon them. The functional integrity of the whole must be maintained or the system goes down, gametes and all. What is this agency called “me”? Just an opportunist weighing the pluses and minuses of various potential movements within a complex environment? Maximization of benefits to ourselves, friends and close relatives? Is there anything else up there that’s not chasing some kind of comfort or neurological reward based upon the needs of all those multiples of cells?

I’ll have to say “no”, that there’s little awareness of anything, we’re just multi-cellular masses of cells interacting with our environments to obtain the greatest reward possible. Unfortunately much of it is just jostling for position within the human hierarchy, a contest which never concludes but gives winners ample neurological reward and losers an equal amount of suffering. Instead of competing to occupy the most sumptuous cave, we have cavemen competing to become top-dog billionaires by pushing the margins of this cancer through every tissue of the ecological body. There is a reason why we don’t feel as connected to nature any longer, it’s because we’re not as connected any longer, we’re a fooking ecosystem-scale cancer that in this rarefied moment in history, cannot abandon those characteristics that led us along this terminal path many, many millenia ago. We’re not God’s technological angel, we’re a nasty, techno-organic, neoplastic juggernaut.

Our minds are blind to cancer’s growing within us until something drastic happens like a large lump appearing and then panic and treatment ensues. Likewise we will be mostly blind to the cancer we have become to the ecosystem until a drastic failure occurs and we will panic and try to save ourselves not with geo-engineering, but with bloody tumor excision and application of systemically toxic weapons directed at the neoplasms – human civilization. If the ecosystem makes it off the operating table, many of us will not be around to see it.

James ez: “We are many (eukaryotic cells) but we are one, operating under one cerebral umbrella that constantly scans the environment for resources and opportunity … Just an opportunist weighing the pluses and minuses of various potential movements within a complex environment?”

Observing that we are only an agglomeration of cells or a whorl of molecules is reductio ad adsurdum. The Western scientific mind is especially adept at not seeing the forest through the trees.

BTW, I’m prone to using extended metaphors myself, so the idea of our species being parasitic or cancerous is appealing — except that it’s obviously in conflict with your statement that “we’re just multi-cellular masses of cells interacting with our environments.” Maybe there is no difference between being a parasite, a scavenger, a predator, or a cancer when they’re all just leveraging their particular mechanisms of survival. The associations behind by those words suggests something else.

Once you understand the evolution of the human brain, what it had to serve, what it had to become and how it was shaped as it was magnetically pulled into the requirements of a new complex adaptive system, what seems absurd will seem instead inevitable. Many people like to think it has supra-normal properties and is the seat of great complexity, but it’s nothing of the sort. Human civilization qualifies as a cancer not only because of its pursuit of infinite growth inside and disruption of the larger organization that hosts it, but because of the manner and root causes of its emergence. I suggest you find a more secure place to drop you intellectual anchor as your undisciplined imagination seems to have set you adrift.

That we, as members of the natural society, have to compete for our sustenance, no less than other organisms, all being subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, which we sometimes fail to grasp or even vaguely comprehend, are part of Nature is a profound fact, nothing more and nothing less. We sometimes assume various basic propositions of our view merely to make their understanding agree with other assumptions. I prefer to believe that our natural processes will continue to drive us until incompatible conditions (perhaps a new set of physical principles) render our extinction, as has happened far more often than not over geologic time. Even the notion of survival may be merely an assumption.

Along with a brain humans also possess a mind. Most scientists insist that mind is an emergent quality of the brain itself. However, a growing number of scientists are coming around to the conclusion that the mind can and does operate outside the brain.

I was telling a young one the other day that Bread rises because yeasts fart, & that Alcohol is sugar that has been digested & excreted by yeast.
The mind does operate outside of the brain, because that is where it gets its inputs & focuses its outputs. The real question is this: are we the only operators in the web of awareness? Probably not.

Study: twice as much methane as previously thought being released from East Siberian Arctic Shelf

– Andrea Germanos, staff writer

New research reveals that the amount of the potent greenhouse gas methane escaping from an area in the Arctic is over twice the amount previously estimated.

For the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers looked at the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a 2-million square kilometer area off the coast of Northern Siberia, and used various techniques including sonar technology to measure the methane escaping.

“It is now on par with the methane being released from the arctic tundra, which is considered to be one of the major sources of methane in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Natalia Shakhova, a lead author of the study and a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Methane, 25 – 30 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2, can be stored under the sea bed as hydrates if sub-sea permafrost remains frozen. The methane escapes when the permafrost thaws and holes are created. The study found that the release of the gas was abetted by storms, which churn up the waters and help speed release of the gas into the atmosphere.

The researchers found that at least 17 teragrams (1 million tons) of the methane are being released into the atmosphere each year; an ealier study found that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf was releasing 7 teragrams of methane yearly.

They note that methane plays an important role in climate change because it’s part of a “positive feedback loop”—as the planet warms, more methane is released, and more methane emissions mean more global warming.

“Increased methane releases in this area are a possible new climate-change-driven factor that will strengthen over time,” stated Shakhova, a leader in methane studies on the East Siberian Shelf.

“We believe that the release of methane from the Arctic, and in particular this part of the Arctic, could impact the entire globe,” she said

All the press releases keep using that 25 x CO2 figure which we know is deceptive, because it’s spread over a century, which nobody cares about.
Over the ten year period which is what matters to US, it’s more like 105 x, and up there in the Arctic it may be even worse, because it causes local warming, so there’s a positive feedback, also THIS, less cloud cover, means the sea water heats up, permafrost heats up, etc, etc… so, once the methane starts, it could quickly become exponential, the land permafrost there, Lena Estuary, has warmed 1 deg C since 2006 which is phenomenal rapid change

These changes lead to a 70 % increase in the atmospheric lifetime of methane, and an 18 % decrease in global mean cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNC). The CDNC change causes a radiative forcing that is comparable in magnitude to the longwave radiative forcing (“enhanced greenhouse effect”) of the added methane. Together, the indirect CH4-O3 and CH4-OH-aerosol forcings could more than double the warming effect of large methane increases. Our findings may help explain the anomalously large temperature changes associated with historic methane releases.

Yes, as we have discussed before, that over-a-century relative forcing value is misleading and meaningless when we are in the early stages of abrupt climate change. I agree, a value of at least a 100 needs to be applied. Perhaps quite a lot higher. I have not seen any over-five-year value reported anywhere. Yet that is what will be significant.

2000ppm methane sounds insignificant but that makes the 2ppm methane equivalent to 200ppm carbon dioxide, for total local forcing equivalence of at least 600ppm.

We touched on the effect higher methane concentrations might have on hydroxyl concentration a while ago. Large releases of methane would be expected to reduce the hydroxyl concentration and increase the residence time of the methane, thereby causing faster warming and even greater annihilation of hydroxyl.

‘However, rather than being panicked into taking any action that might adversely effect oil company profits and impact the global economy, we should sit on our hands an do nothing until the exact mechanism for abrupt climate change can be studied under actual abrupt climate change conditions.’

Just a note here. A teragram is a million tonnes. Seventeen teragrams is seventeen million tons. Multiply that by a factor of 100 to convert net present forcing of methane to a CO2 equivalent and you have 1.7 gigatonnes. Annual CO2 new accumulation (emissions minus sinks) is roughly 5 gigatonnes. From that perspective 1.7 gigatonnes is rather significant. And this is not new methane from the Arctic Ocean or from the Arctic region as a whole but merely from the small and limited area of the ESAS. Even if one would wish to hope that the current trickle of methane hydrates does not soon become a flood, seventeen teragrams is a lot of forcing.

From memory, last time ESAS was discussed, just 1% of what’s there would give us doubled atmospheric CO2 which could be 1 deg C per year temp rise over a decade.

And this

The potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) is given short shrift in climate science, and that’s not even considering the methane hydrate or permafrost thaw issues. In fact, sustained methane levels from microbe-generated methane (microbial methanogenesis) could dwarf an Arctic methane hydrate pulse from the East Siberian Shelf.

Me too, and it might be something to do with the amazing superhuman efforts that appear to be made to play down any possibility that there might be a risk…. which seem so odd.
Because on the face of it, it looks kinda scary, and when you dig in and try to understand the fine detail it gets absolutely scary as hell… but mainstream media and mainstream scientists all say look the other way, nothing to worry about, it’s only 20 times as strong as CO2 after all, blahblah…

Why did they make up that 20x figure in the first place ? We should all be using the CO2e, to include methane and nitrous oxide, and we should be focussing on what happens over the next three decades or so, not what happens in 100 years…

geez – add to all of the above the fact that the magnetic shield surrounding the planet is weakening at the same time that the one around the Sun is also weakening and one might get the idea, fanciful as it is, that we’re headed for some kind of trouble, and probably sooner than we might think.

‘when you dig in and try to understand the fine detail it gets absolutely scary as hell… but mainstream media and mainstream scientists all say look the other way, nothing to worry about, it’s only 20 times as strong as CO2 after all, blahblah…

Why did they make up that 20x figure in the first place ? We should all be using the CO2e, to include methane and nitrous oxide, and we should be focussing on what happens over the next three decades or so, not what happens in 100 years…

Everything has been massaged to try and fix the numbers to suit BAU.’

A decade or so ago the notion that ice sheets would remain intact for hundreds of years because they reflect a high proportion of the incoming radiation predominated. When I started writing about all this stuff (1999) I was thinking in terms of utter catastrophe by 2100.

We now know the notion of slow-melting ice sheets was incorrect; Also, rampant consumerism, increase in population, the increase in coal burning, the total lack of action by governments to mitigate anything etc. I have caused me to updated my thinking, and I now think in terms of utter global environmental catastrophe within two decades and some form of global economic and social mayhem within 5 years.

I have delved deeper than most (maybe deeper than anyone else) into the workings of central and local government: all policies are founded on lies. The game being played is perception management, keeping the general populace from realising they are constantly lied to, so that opportunists can continue to loot and pollute the commons. There is no informed public debate of anything of significance. Under such a system Near Term Human Extinction, wiping out most other vertebrate species, becomes inevitable.

Unfortunately, many who work in Federal and State positions, in academia, and in the media, are not as informed as they should be. Even those said to be well-informed could be mistaken. Consequently, half-truths and misconceptions are abundant, some of which could be lies (intended false statements). This, I believe, is part of why James Hansen left NASA. Scientists have known about the possibility of global warming since 1863 from the work of Tyndall who demonstrated the atmospheric effects of CO2. See the link below for a history of CO2/global warming:http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/annex2.carbon.diox.pdf

It has been my experience (and have plenty of experience and lots of documentation) that when people in government, both central and local, are provided with the correct information and the most up-to-date analysis they totally ignore it and do what they want (are instructed?) to do, i.e. promote looting and polluting.

Every district plan I have seen over the past ten years has been full of absurdities; indeed, most plans I have been completely composed of absurdities.

Emeritus professor Albert Bartlett pointed it out long ago in his brilliant, and now quite famous, lecture ‘Arithmetic Population and Energy’. ‘Nobody’ listened to him either.

it comes back to question posed by Brutus: Are humans smarter than yeast? People who read and comment on blogs such as this may be, but bureaucrats and politicians certainly are not, and promote policies that will result in the destruction of their own progeny’s future (or their own, if they are young).

Hahaha, thankyou, Jacob. Yes, they can be noisy. You’ll understand why I had to learn how to silence them.

Need to read the other quotes,

“I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them… there is nothing.”

U mentioned the ‘amazing superhuman efforts that appear to be made to play down any possibility that there might be a risk’.

My district council and the regional council go to great lengths to assess risks from the dormant volcano 30km away and the risk of major earthquakes. The annual risk is of the order of 1 in 500, i.e. 0.2%.

On the other hand, peak oil, having already occurred, has a risk factor of 100%, yet these bodies totally ignore the issue (and by implication rate the risk at zero). It’s much the same with climate change. As far as the governing bodies of the region are concerned the risk is close to zero. Indeed, the idiot regional environment officer, Gary Bedford, not long ago described climate change as ‘good for the region’. As far as the local climate change officer, Colin Comber, is concerned, the answer to climate change is electric bikes. The council has half-a-dozen.

What chance do we or the next generation stand when lunacy is promoted not only by the corporate media but also by the governing bodies?

The Death March continues.

By the way, I suppose others have seen the reports of unprecedented flooding in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

the prospect of NTE even for a 65 year old like myself causes psychic pain it’s a grief you can’t avoid and reminds me of Hamlet’s soliloquy: (For Conscience read rather Consciousness) To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.[2]

The IPPC’s most recent GWP for methane (with carbon-climate feedbacks) is 86 times CO2 over 20 years. Using this figure, emission of 17 Tg of methane equals about 1.5 Gt of CO2. By comparison, emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are 36 Gt of CO2. If the exponential trend persisted and reached 2 Gt of methane by 2031, that would equal 344 Gt of CO2, or almost 10 times current emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production.

Here’s another way of looking at it. There’s currently is some 5 Gt of methane in the atmosphere, causing about 1 W/m2 of global warming. By comparison, CO2 emissions cause some 1.68 W/m2 of global warming. While abrupt release of, say, 2 Gt of methane in the Arctic would obviously cause a huge amount of additional global warming, it would cause even more warming locally, resulting in further exponential growth of methane emissions in the Arctic, as the graph depicts.

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OWS knows who really pulls the strings

"...the megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. Indeed, Occupy's best move, as conservative blogger/financier Gregory Djerejian noted at TheAtlantic.com, was "directing their ire squarely toward the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington."

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